Users of reanalyses data for environmental assessments - EEA perspective

1. Users of reanalyses data for environmental assessments - EEA perspective Markus ErhardEuropean Environment Agency (EEA)Copenhagen, Denmark

2. The EEA Mandate “The EEA aims to support sustainable development and to help achieve significant and measurable improvement in Europe's environment through the provision of timely, targeted, relevant and reliable information to policy making agents and the public.”

3. EEA Geographical Coverage

4. EEA main tasks 32 Member Countries ~300 National agencies~900 Experts • Networking - Development of a European Environmental Information and Observation Network (EIONET) • Reporting on the state and trends of Europe’s environment • Providing access to environmental information www.eionet.europa.eu www.eionet.europa.eu/reportnet.html http://dataservice.eea.europa.eu/

5. EEA functions • EEA as user of environmental data input for assessments and reporting • EEA/EIONET as provider of environmental data  reporting obligations (e.g. emissions, air quality, biodiversity) and volunteering actions (e.g. land-cover, ozone-web) • EEA as facilitator  e.g. (discuss user requirements with ACRE)

6. Ecosystem Services (examples) Sectors Services Indicators Agriculture Food & fibre production Bioenergy production • Agricultural land area (Farmer livelihood) • Suitability of crops • Biomass energy yield Forestry Wood production • Tree productivity: growing stock & increment Carbon storage Climate protection • Carbon storage in vegetation • Carbon storage in soil Water Water supply (drinking, irrigation, hydropower) Drought & flood pre-vention • Runoff quantity • Runoff seasonality • Water quality • Species richness and turnover (plants, mammals, birds, reptiles, amphibian) • Shifts in suitable habitats • Phenology Biodiversity Beauty Life support processes (e.g. pollination)human health Mountains Tourism (e.g. winter sports) Recreation ‘Water tower’ • Snow (elevation of snow line) • Glacier mass balance Courtesy Metzger & Schröter

7. EEA information services EIONET National Data centres Sub-national Data centres Internet (Inspire) User GMES Emissions data Internat. Conventions Data from other Directives Basic Reference data Example WISEWater Information System for Europe

8. SEIS concept From individual data bases towards Shared Environmental Information System (SEIS) SEIS is a collaborative initiative of European and National bodies to establish an integrated and sustained information system for sharing environmental data. • A system where the public authorities are the providers but also the main end-users and beneficiaries • A contribution to the Commission’s commitment to better regulation and simplification (Go4, 2007)

9. EEA Priorities and Tools Nature and Biodiversity Climate Change data centres Land use Water Air Services and analytical tools Spatial data infrastructure Reportnet data flow tools EIONET system connections SEIS elements

10. The shifting baseline – temp (time) Source CRU 2002

11. The shifting baseline precipitation (time & space) Source CRU 2002

12. Availability of Climate and Weather Data

13. Temporal resolution The ‘Meteo Data Gap‘ for Environmental Assessments climate data environmental impact assessments hours days months station data Gap in meteorological data reanalyses data extreme events 0km 50km 100km 150km Spatial resolution

14. Scaling up and down

15. Scaling issues (I) • System inherent temporal and spatial dimension of assessments (‘eigentime‘ of systems) • Assessments in higher resolution than output • Use of variables derived from ‘standard‘ weather data • Long term meteorological data (several decades): - station data irregular- climate data > 25km x 25km- weather data > 50km x 50km • Average size of watersheds/catchments (CCM2 scale 1:250.000)~ 5 km2 (complex terrain) 40-50% EU27 Territory ~100 km2 (flat terrain) (ca. 2.5km x 2.5km to 10km x 10km) (European catchment database CCM2)

16. Scaling issues (II) • High resolution data (space and time) and extreme events - Flood risk: high resolution precipitation - Air quality: high resolution temperatures, precipitation, humidity, etc.- Human health: heat waves - Wind energy potential for Europe: high resolution wind data - Storm and storm surges (marine)

17. Scaling issues (III) • Monthly climatologies - Water accounting 10km x 10km resolution (temperature precipitation and derived parameters e.g. evapotranspiration) - Species distribution and migration temperature and precipitation data - Downscaling climate change scenarios - Marine systems - Carbon accounting, forest growth • Marine – land transition (coastal management)

18. Data specification - Key Issues • Seamless (transboundary and land – marine) pan-European weather data available for environmental assessments and web based services (data services, reporting obligations, GMES, GEOSS) • Long-term time series for detecting trends in climate and weather (including extreme events e.g. storms, heat waves) • Appropriate spatial resolution for regional assessments of climate change impacts (IPCC -WGI) and adaptation strategies • Precipitation - from trends to quantities • Access to data in an European Shared Environmental Information System (SEIS) • Towards Near Real Time from environmental hind-casting (x-2y) towards now-casting (and forecasting)

19. ... it‘s not only the met data but with insufficent met data it‘s even worse... Precipitation Simulated flow Measured flow

20. EEA activities • Networking  EEA contributes to GEOSS and coordinates GMES in-situ component (user requirements and data policies) • Access  EEA facilitates data access (institutional barriers, data policies) • Architecture  EEA fosters SEIS and contributes to OGC and INSPIRE (architecture) • Projects  EEA facilitates EURRA (high resolution re-analysis for Europe) National expert for project outline (ECMWF-EUMETNET)

21. Thanks for your attention!markus.erhard@eea.europa.euhttp://www.eea.europa.eu